{Soul Notes} Miracles In Disguise

Recently I felt the urge to ask the graduates of the Soul Business Blueprint this question: ‘What do you know to be true about soul-based business?’ I asked them to write their responses for the Sacred Business blog. Here are their inspiring reflections…

“If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise. If you go down to the woods today, you’d better go in disguise.”

Who doesn’t know the catchy Teddy Bears’ Picnic song from their childhood?

I knew it too but only just now linked it to the process and journey of the Soul Business Blueprint program in my life.

I met Natalie Kent four years ago when I completed Certificates 3 & 4 in Psychosomatic Therapy in Nerang, Qld and was both intrigued and spellbound by her delightfully ethereal, fairy-like way she had about her. I was fortunate enough to attend a workshop she ran a year later and was again enamoured by her sparkle and glow. It’s the only way I can describe how she appeared to me.

Then I began more recently to follow her on Facebook as she began her Sacred Business endeavour and looked forward to all of her blogs, posts, videos and interviews. But there was now something different about her; a deep sense of powerful peace that sat beautifully alongside the sparkle and glow and I wanted what she was having!

I knew that I wanted to work with her and that I was still drawn to her, like a moth to a flame. But unlike the unhappy ending that the moth is going to have, I knew that working with Natalie would help me uncover and discover my own sparkle, glow and powerful inner……something!

So one day back in May of this year, both the timing for me and the offer from her was right as the planets aligned for us to begin working together in her Soul Business Blueprint Program.

As I set off on my journey into the woods with her, on an unfamiliar, overgrown, winding and also invisible at times path, I thought I knew what I was in for, what my business was and at least roughly where I was headed. Wrong!! Disguise number one identified.

As we worked through the first three weeks of the Soul Blueprint and I peeled away layer after layer of disguise that I had unknowingly, subconsciously but so cleverly and firmly placed there over my almost 50 years of life, I found myself in some unknown yet also strangely familiar territory. It reminds me now of a game I play on my phone sometimes where, as a bonus, you get to increase your score by pre-selecting the hole in the ice that the cute little penguin will pop her head out of last. The more times she pops her head out of the other holes, the higher your score goes until she pops up out of the one you originally chose and the game is over. So of course you hope she pops up lots of times from any hole other than yours. I saw myself, the real, true, deep, inner me, popping up from those holes, each time giving me a glimpse of what was under those disguises. And I was hoping that this game could go on as I glimpsed myself – my soul – more and more each time. I saw me and I lost count of the number of times this soul recognition moved me to tears.

As a woman, mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend and employee, I reckon I had loads of disguises that had been there for years. And I didn’t even know they existed until I gave the ultimate gift to myself of investing in myself enough to want to know what, or more correctly, WHO was under them all.

Oh, I had peeled away some of them the very hard and painful way six years before as I jumped dramatically from one version of my life to another but I didn’t want to go through that particular process ever again. The Soul Blueprint was a far gentler, more loving and intuitive way of doing so which also promised results of a deeper, truer nature. I felt it. I knew it. And I began to crave it. I looked excitedly forward to our weekly sessions together and mostly enjoyed the solo work that was required between them in delving deeply into who I was, where I had come from, what was important to me and building up to my surprising Sacred Gift that I’d previously fought hard against, almost insisting that it wasn’t! There’s a lesson in that for most of us I think – that which you repel, dislike and rail against is actually what needs your most immediate and thorough attention and nurturing!

As I moved into the Business Blueprint part of the course, I already had a fledgling business selling Earthing and Aromatherapy products. I had a website that took nine months to grow and birth. I was meeting some wonderful people and helping them to improve their lives from a natural therapy perspective and I thought that this was what I would be expanding, growing and promoting, only in a way more fitting for me. Another disguise…

Events that conspired during that part of the course along with Natalie’s amazing intuitive ability to see through my disguises when I couldn’t and my own growing ability to tune in to what my own intuition and heart were telling me blew me wildly off my narrow, blinkered path and headlong into the most exciting, amazing, sobering and deeply important realisation of my life.

My life IS my Soul Business. My lessons, my loves, my fears, my triumphs, my hatreds, my passions, my experiences and my beliefs have all conspired to bring me to this place where I am now; a place of self-awareness where I’d previously been other-aware, a place of knowledge and wisdom that I’d previously seen as mistakes and weaknesses, a place of freedom that lived previously as disappointment borne of trying to live up to others’ expectations and a place of deep inner power that was previously something I baulked at and ran from.

But still a beginning point from which to build on and grow as I gain more wisdom, insight, realisation and knowledge to another place where I can share these understandings with the world in a way that is aligned with my soul. First there is some more work for me to do. While I have lived my life and learned these lessons to this point already, there are still some important fundamental foundations to be put in place in order to roll this out in a BIG way in the world, which is my intention.

In other words, I’ve gotta walk my own talk. Before I can teach something, I must embody it. This is true for me and may not be for you but I must be fully, deeply aligned with it or it will show as a fakeness and inauthenticity to all I interact with.

Since I was about 17, I’ve had a deep knowing that I was meant to do something BIG in the world. I have no idea where it came from – one day it was just there. It’s come & gone from my consciousness over the years and I’ve often wondered what it meant. Being a mum is a big job but I knew that wasn’t it. Working in administration, bookkeeping and accounting all my life is also a big job but again, that wasn’t it. My ego was great at telling me I couldn’t do or be anything that big but the intensity, truth and knowing of that soul-belief I had would always override my belittling self-talk. And I clung onto it as a kind of beacon that one day, somehow, that BIG thing I was meant to do or be would show itself.

One quiet morning, on a day like any other, it came to me… quietly whispering to me, as I’ve now learned through this course, is the way my soul speaks to me. My Family Tree of Beliefs. Genealogy with a twist. THIS WAS IT!! Or at least the basis of it because at that stage I didn’t even know exactly what that entailed but over the course of the last few weeks its importance to us all has become increasing clear to me. Also, I realised that my tribe is all around me. Women who are living from a place of somebody else’s beliefs and expectations are all around me. Women just like me who have grown up so other-aware that they’ve not even realised that there IS a self inside them. They do for others so much that they forget themselves. They slot into a way of living and being that comes from what they grew up around.

And to be fair to us all, because it starts so young and our families are also doing the same, we don’t usually know any other way. Until we do. And now I do. And so can you.

You inherit more than your brown hair, green eyes, fair skin and creative ability from your parents and their parents. Most of these genetic traits you can’t change but they also don’t impact your life on a day-to-day and even moment-to-moment basis like your inherited belief systems do. These belief systems impact your life in so many ways but it’s something we tend not to question or even be aware of. What am I worth? Why do I believe that? Who told me that? What have I picked up from my role-models? What do I believe about myself as a woman and my place in the world? And the most important question of all ~ Do I PERSONALLY believe this to be true? Is this mine or someone else’s belief? These beliefs you CAN change because most of them were never yours in the first place.

For now, my retail business continues. I continue to revel in the wonderful health improvements that my customers are achieving through using my products and I know that it too is important to the world. Nature has a cure for everything and I believe we can ease our pain and discomfort by connecting with and using Mother Earth and her benevolent gifts as they are intended.

But back to the words of the song… I truly did get a big surprise when I ventured into the woods of my life with Natalie as my guide! But as I’ve come to understand more fully, underneath the disguises lie a wealth of knowing, wisdom, connection and loving kindness just waiting to show themselves. My Soul Business Blueprint showed me mine 🙂